Milk seems such an ordinary product, yet it sparks off so many memories.
A pickup truck sounds in the night, footsteps trudge to the door, bottles clink, the truck drives off and I drift back to sleep in the silence. It was to be our last delivery. We had left a note to cancel the milk, to join all the other households who over the past forty years have forsaken the milkman for the supermarket.
Until a couple of months earlier our milkman had been Rodney. Like day follows night, he delivered five days a week, extra on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and called to be paid once a month on a Monday. But one month he surprised us by calling on a Friday, “… to make things easier for Monday,” he said. “Good idea to have a bit of a break on a bank holiday,” we replied.
On Monday there was double on the step: eight full bottles (the kids were at home). Where could we keep all that? And there was a note signed by Ben: “I have taken over as your new milkman”. Rodney had not let out even the tiniest hint. “I will be delivering three days a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I will not be calling for payment but will leave a monthly invoice instead. Please would you leave a cheque by return.”
Three days a week! Monthly invoice! Cheque! What a layabout. We replied on the Wednesday to say just four each time please. There wasn’t enough room in the fridge for more. On other days we began to buy our milk in four-pint plastic bottles from the supermarket. We never saw Ben in person at all.
* * *
How different from how things used to be: milk fresh to the door seven days a week. It had to be before we all had fridges. In summer, we had to keep the bottles in a bowl of cold water in the kitchen sink, covered with a wet tea cloth, to stop it going off.
When I was little, our milkman was Jack Hunter who had a van. Not so long before that he had brought his milk on a horse drawn float. He was already ancient, but we had him all the way through my childhood and beyond. He worked well into his eighties, tall, straight, white hair, khaki dust coat, bottle carriers at his sides. How did he keep going? I would not have got up in the early hours to work a sixty-hour week, snow, ice, wind and rain, even in my twenties. There used to be a joke about the milkman who joined the army and thought it was great because he could stay in bed until six o’clock. Jack usually got to us before breakfast time but one day it was dinner time before he arrived. “You’re late today Jack. You look terrible!” my mum commented. “Sorry,” he said, “Edie died in the night.” His wife had died in bed beside him yet he still came round with the milk.
Jack left the bottles in the boot scraper beside the front door. Bottles were taller and thinner then, not the squat dumpy ones we have now. I know because Sooty the cat is sitting next to such a bottle on another doorstep in 1964. Milk was always full-cream (full-fat, perjoratively). No one had semi-skimmed until the nineteen-eighties. Even in 1985, full-cream accounted for over 90% of sales. My dad remained loyal to it until the end. The “cream” floated to the top and he liked it over a bowl of strawberries or raspberries. It was a treat to have it on your cornflakes.
It was always full-cream at school too. The government would not fund anything less. All school children under eighteen were allowed one-third of a pint free per
day to alleviate poor nutrition, a major hindrance to learning. The
Wilson government ended it for secondary pupils in 1968, and “Thatcher
the milk snatcher” for all children over seven in 1971. Until then it came in little bottles exactly the same shape but one-third the size of those at home, sour in summer, frozen and expanding up from the tops in winter, slithering out at the necks like the heads of snails wearing silver berets. When not frozen we had a round, plastic, dimpled gadget for pressing in the foil tops, to avoid poking your thumbs in, but I didn’t like how it looked and felt, and it smelt as well, so I wouldn’t touch the nasty thing and used my thumbs anyway.
The ending of school milk never bothered me because I had left by then, and in any case, most of us had stopped drinking it by around fourteen. It was there if you wanted it, as much as you could drink, crates of it piled next to the lockers. When in the sixth form we started going to a friend’s house most days after school, and his mother complained about the amount of milk we were getting through, we began helping ourselves to milk from school. By the end of the year he must have had a hundred empty bottles stuffed under his bed. We got rid of them in a street bin around the corner.
So many memories! At one place I lived, the milk came around 6.00 a.m. but it began to disappear from the doorstep, stolen by an early riser or someone going home from the night shift. I entertained the idea of substituting a pint of sour milk until I realised it might get thrown through the window. I listened for the milkman in my sleep, dashed down to bring the milk in, and went back to bed. I suppose that’s why I still hear him in the night.
When we moved to where we live now, Sandra, the milk lady, waylaid us as we unloaded the furniture. “Free milk for a month” she said, which was too good to turn down. Her round was later taken over by someone else, and then again, until we got Rodney around ten years ago. The only problem we ever had was that someone pinched our metal milk bottle cover which prevented the birds from pecking at it and giving us psittacosis. I made a wooden one. Rodney was impressed. “I could sell those,” he said. “It even has little feet.”
We imagined Rodney would go on forever until, one day, without warning, there would be no milk and we would curse him thinking he was just late. We never thought he would actually retire.
* * *
The new deliveries just three days a week were confusing and inconvenient. Not only that, it usually came around midnight. What good would that be on warm summer nights, standing out in the early morning sun before we brought it in? And then we got a note to say the milkman was going on holiday and had not been able to find a stand-in, so there would be no milk for a week. Unbelievable – a milkman who goes on holiday! It seemed best to cancel it completely. The irresistible forces of home refrigeration, supermarket price wars and a milkman who wanted some sort of work-life balance had finally won.
It seemed a pity. Despite paying twice the supermarket price for the privilege, it felt good to be supporting a local service. The milk came from a nearby farm and the reusable glass bottles were environmentally friendly. It seems that in some city areas, doorstep deliveries are making a comeback supported by a growing band of eco-enthusiasts prepared to pay a fair price for their milk. One London firm still uses electric milk floats. “We have started to become hip and trendy again” they said. “Customers are beginning to realise that cheap milk from supermarkets is not sustainable for farmers.”
We put out the note to cancel the milk, rolled up and poked in the top of a bottle. That evening there was a loud knock on the door: a very determined knock. It was Ben, the new milkman: the only time we have ever seen him. “I don’t want to lose volume” he complained. We explained our reasons – the need to store large quantities, the milk on the step in the sun. “Well,” he said, “I can do it in four-pint plastic containers like from the supermarket.” So we’re giving it a go. We get all our milk from him now and haven’t cancelled it at all. Two four-pint containers will fit in the fridge door, whereas eight one-pint bottles will not. It costs less than glass bottles too. I had to make a bigger milk bottle box though. The hinged lid is very satisfying but we’ve no idea what the new milkman makes of it. We’ve still only seen him the once.
It is not ideal to be using more plastic, but at least plastic bottles appear to be more easily recyclable than the Tetra-Paks they used to have. As for Rodney, it turns out he hasn’t retired. He has just cut down the size of his round. We still see him out and about but he no longer delivers to our street.
REFERENCES
- On duty with the last of the milkman. The Telegraph, 10th July, 2017.
- Milkmen to make a comeback – but they charge twice as much as supermarkets. The Telegraph, 25th April, 2016.
- Thatcher ‘the snatcher’ may not have been wrong. The Telegraph, 5th January, 2006.
- Doorstep milk deliveries still gotta lotta bottle. The Financial Times, 29th April, 2016. This is behind a paywall, but if you search for the title you may be able to see it.
- The perils of the pint on your doorstep. The Times, 2nd September, 1981, page 11.
- Shopping around for a healthy life. The Times, 8th May, 1985, page 10.
